Lies, damned lies, and damnable liars
by Mira and Charles on November 23rd, 2009Sometimes you run into someone so evil and hypocritical that is just makes your head spin. It’s really disturbing. And that happened to us here when we were interviewed for a piece about a question someone sent in to the Today show. The questioner reveals – did she even realize it? – a heart so foul that it is almost unbelievable. But here’s an advance look at the raw questions and answers.
1. Besides the incident in this MSNBC article, why do men and women ever lie or trick their spouses?
MK: It’s some combination of evil and stupidity. By evil, I mean a focus on “what I want” and not on what’s good for the other person. This evil is an inability to or an unwillingness to put oneself in the other person’s position. Interestingly, in the happiest, longest-lasting marriages, you tend to find that people really think about what things are like from their partner’s point of view. After all, love is when the other person’s happiness and well being is as important to you as your own. But stupidity comes into play here too. People think their deceptions just won’t matter or won’t be found out. But they always are. And then there’s hell to pay…
2. How can small lies or deceptions grow into bigger ones and start to damage a relationship?
MK: It starts when you’re attracted to someone and are afraid that you, as you really are, won’t possibly be attractive to him or her. It can start as a harmless-seeming resume inflation: your job is made out to seem more important than it really is, you make yourself out to have more money than you really do, your real role in your previous divorce is made out to seem more innocent than it is, you claim to want children more passionately than you really do. We think that these exaggerations and deceptions won’t matter once we’re deeply in love – once he sees how wonderful you are he won’t care. Or, more coldly, once he’s in it will be hard for him to get out. But a deception like this is a message that, “You don’t count, only what I can get from you. The love you thought was real was really a lie.” And so these kinds of deceptions usually flash freeze love and then you see it crumble into hate.
3. What starts happening when honesty is eroded between partners? What are their interactions like?
MK: Let’s face it: we lie to people we don’t care about, people we want to use, and people we’re afraid of. A lie is a way of telling someone he falls into one of those three categories. But if you tell me you don’t care about me, or that you want to use me, or that you’re afraid of me, then you’re telling me that our relationship, our love, our closeness is a lie too. All I can do is pull back, far back, in hurt and anger. So there is an hurt, chill distance. People live like angry roommates, not intimate friends. And here’s the thing: it takes a long time, to heal a betrayal. You can say you’ll never lie again, but years will have to go by for me to believe it.
4. How do men and women differ in how they lie and what they lie about?
MK: There is NO difference in how men and women lie and what they lie about or in how likely they are to lie. Well, OK there is one difference: only a man will lie about how big his penis is, and only a woman will lie about how big her breasts are. But that’s it. Liars of both genders will lie right to your face, looking you right in the eye, with conviction in their voice. The big difference, the only difference is between secure and insecure people, good and evil people, and sane and mentally disordered people.
For more on how this plays out in the context of a couple trying to deal with an affair, check out our When Good People Have Affairs.
